Polly and Niamh wrote about the fact that our stereotypical image of a domestic abuse victim is not a young university student, despite the fact that women aged 16 – 24 are the group at the highest risk of experiencing domestic abuse. They wrote about university initiatives which tackled sexual harassment and the limitations within these initiatives, as well as how reluctance to label behaviours as ‘coercive’ can prevent reporting.

“Not only are there misconceptions about who can experience domestic abuse, but misconceptions about what that abuse looks like. Women’s Liberation Officer Chris Belous told us that recognition tends to be for the more “obvious signs of abusive, violent relationships, while other things like emotional abuse and gaslighting go unnoticed”. When talking about domestically abusive relationships, so often the first question asked is ‘did they hit you?’. Not only does this significantly downplay the catastrophic effects emotional abuse can have, but makes victims less likely to come forward as they do not feel their relationship is abusive if there is no violence.”

Judges’ comments:“A hugely important subject with clear and economic prose.”

“Extremely well researched and evidenced and written in an engaging style and strong gender analysis”